There is therapy...and then there is therapy.
Special day-glo 7 year old art spattered sweatshirt, new lavendar (I am informed "menopause lavendar"--sigh) boots, ubiquitous cup of perfect coffee, Squishy who spent 4+hours of the previous evening going toe to toe, I mean, paw to paw with his orange poodle friend, Jack, gardening tools, and a very early, quiet morning to clear an area in the side garden that I haven't touched since I did it a year ago and spent the same kind of morning with Fiona, she, sleepily, contentedly resting under her rubus plant except when she would amble over to plop herself smack dab in the small area of earth that I was trying to detangle of old bluebells and whitebells. This morning was a kind of communing with that beautiful old spirit. I am missing her so. It was tender to be doing this this morning as I remember and hold that it is, indeed, almost a complete turning of the wheel and the seasons since she was reborn. There is also the holding of my garden tools from being stolen by this fox-dog who also likes to eat chunks of coals that turn up in the earth. He likes to gnaw on the butterfly bush trunk and plant himself smack dab in the small area of the garden that I am trying to clear....kind of reminds me of someone. When I look into his eyes, there is something there in them and between us that is SO right that I have no words. Me, no words....

Then there is going to a therapist who gets it. Who can give more examples and her own connection and experience of life skills and "middles" to truth, awareness, striving, intending, grieving, and exploring..."embodied creativity" is a powerful phrase...said same therapist also has great ideas for role playing strategies, body language, and movement to be authentic to one's own need and desire to be safe AND a person of peace. There is a way of being in the world (at least at Folklife) where if one runs into one's ex-husband, one doesn't have to promote more discord in the Universe by saying the first thing that consistently comes into one's head and mouth (insert bad words) which brings me to my next therapy...
Sitting in a room with sisters, 4 of them and one in our hearts, minds and conversations, and having a couple of them volunteer to speak the words for me----and having them get it and respect it when I say that it won't be necessary. Then there is the therapy of dancing in the living room at Grandma's (Brigie and Coli's house, a.k.a. Somerset House on Lynn). When I couldn't remember right from left, front from back, up from down on Tuesday at the room at Phinney, put me in that happy place with my sisters, the pink rug, the idiosyncracies of creative, powerful, love-defined, irreverently women of the same mother and my body and mind relaxed and I "knew" all my steps, the music, my dances, my rhythm, my way...

And then there is the weedwhacker...at it for hours. After successfully and confidently going to Home Depot to get replacement spools. I whacked...and whacked...and whacked...then I swept and slept to a boring video of the Windsor Royal Family.
Have to go find a sports bra (my sisters say I can't dance if I don't wear one) and black tights. Tonight will be fun if I don't pass out because it's past my bedtime by 40 minutes.